Festival of Fools

“ We well may call it Folly's Mirror, Since every fool there sees his error. His proper worth would each man know, The Glass of Fools the troth will show. Who meets his image on the page, May learn to deem himself no sage; Nor shrink his nothingness to see, Since naught that lives from fault is free. And who in conscience dare be sworn, That cap and bells he ne'er hath worn? He who his foolishness descries Alone deserves to rank as wise, While who doth wisdom's airs rehearse May stand godfather to my verse. ”

“ My folly mayhap shall delight thee, A song of fools I will recite thee, Lady fair—O list!” Herewith he sighed amain, but smiled anon, And fell anon to blither, louder note: “Sing hey, Folly—Folly ho, And here's a song of Folly, All 'neath the sun, Will gladly run Away from Melancholy. “And Fool, forsooth, a Fool am I, Well learned in foolish lore: For I can sing ye, laugh or sigh: Can any man do more? Hey, Folly—Folly, ho! 'Gainst sadness bar the door. “A Fool am I, yet by fair leave, Poor Fools have hearts to feel. ”

“ You are indefatigable."
"Pardon me," said Meyer yawning; "we are exceedingly tired. But as I have been constantly reminding my comrades,—almost to the point of boredom,—we are a pack of fools and must pay for our folly by the inconvenience of a night in the snow."
"If you are fools," said Karl, "I am the king of fools. But at least there is something noble in your folly, if it leads you from warmth and shelter to a hopeless search over a snow-bound countryside." ”

“ They dared not speak without thinking, which, time out of mind, has been the privilege of your fool; and if their wit offended against good manners, they ran good chance of a whipping. It was probably to hold the freedom of the sprightly corporation in check that Philander von Sittewald invented and described the Hell of Fools, which he is supposed to have visited. The locality, we are told, was like the cellar of a palace, which was crowded with Zanies, condemned to hear for ever, and to burst with envy at, each other’s jokes. The retribution and the sarcasm are equally severe. ”

“ Shall the hill-top outspread a pavilion more safe than our
palaces hold?
Without toil we are fed,
We have gold to our hire,
We have kings at our thrall,
And made smooth is our bed
For the fools of desire.
We falter the world with our eyelids, at our laughter men
scatter and fall.
What is freedom but danger,
And death and disaster?
We are safe: Fool, to crave
The unknown, the stranger!
More fettered the back than the burden; man bows ”

“ Not another individual prepared to avoid the tempest. Each man waited to see the fools drenched, and every man there was, in two minutes, wet to the very skin.
When the sun re-appeared, the philosopher walked out into the market-place. The thoroughly-soaked idiots, observing his comfortable condition, hailed the good man with the epithet of “fool.” They pelted him with sticks and stones, tore his gown, plucked his beard, and loaded him with foul terms that would have twisted the jaw of Aristophanes. ”

“ Of their share in the miracles the next volume may speak [1365] : their relations to the development of comedy require a word or two here. That normal fifteenth-century comedy, that of the farce and the morality, in any way had its origin in the Feast of Fools, whether clerical or lay, can hardly be admitted. It almost certainly arose out of the minstrel tradition, and when already a full-blown art was adapted by the fous, as by other groups of amateur performers, from minstrelsy. With the special forms of the sottie and the sermon joyeux it is otherwise. ”

“ The bauble of the Fool in "King Lear" rings us into a horizon that, before we reach it, mutters with the premonition of madness; and we wonder if any humor can find shelter with us underneath that blackening sky. When the Fool joins our company, we search his features in vain for a trace of Feste's and Touchstone's temper. That spring of geniality has been stirred by the king's misfortunes till it is roiled into irony; and we recognize the only tone that can take lodgings in this tragedy. ”

“ Thus, in an old play, entitled A very mery and pythie Comedy, called, The longer thou livest the more Foole thou art, printed about 1580, the appearance of a character of this description is prefaced by the following stage-note:—"Entreth Moros, counterfaiting a vaine gesture and a foolish countenance, synging the foote of many songs, as fools were wont." [587:A]
The simple yet sarcastic drollery of the fool, and the wild ravings of the madman, have been alike employed by Shakspeare, to deepen the gloom of distress. ”

“ Her eldest Son went to buy an Halfpenny worth of Inkle at a Shoe-maker's; the eldest Daughter was dispatch'd half a Mile to see a Monster; and, in short, the whole Family of innocent Children made
April
Fools. Nay, my Landlady herself did not escape him. This empty Fellow has laughed upon these Conceits ever since.
This Art of Wit is well enough, when confined to one Day in a Twelvemonth; but there is an ingenious Tribe of Men sprung up of late Years, who are for making
April
Fools every Day in the Year. ”

“ The figure holding a balance in his hand, the heavier scale containing a turreted feudal castle, the lighter the celestial sphere, emblazoned with sun, moon, and stars, is emblematical of the folly which consists in preferring temporal to eternal happiness.
In another woodcut a fool is seen riding on a cray-fish, his hand pierced by a reed he has leant on, his mouth gaping for a dove flying towards him ready roasted; and the text explains this allegory as signifying those who expect rewards they have not earned either in this world or the next. ”

“ May we not reasonably conclude that there was once considerable dignity attached to the office of fool, seeing that many ancient families bore the insignia of fools in their arms? The chief of these was the family of Briesach, long54 since extinct; and indeed I only know one house now existing whose crest seems to intimate some connection with the old jester, or some love of “short, brilliant folly.” I allude to the House of Orford (Walpole) . The crest is a male bust, on whose head is the old official fool’s cap, rising from a coronet. ”

“ Of folks-festivals, with processions, illuminations, and fireworks, always the same, now in honor of one saint, now of another, and frequently of the Madonna, we have generally two every week. The brilliant parts of the festival, are often very brilliant and tasteful; but the horrible explosions of powder-men, which are set up, like a kind of mustard-pot, in rings and rows on the square, which tumble about everywhere, after they have exploded; the smoke which they occasion, and the incessant jingling of bells, disturb our hearing, our eye-sight and all our other senses. ”

“ The “mode” in Germany dates undoubtedly from a very early time, if we may credit a German poetical tradition which tells us that the jester used to appear in the procession of the condemned to execution. But this incident is perhaps only the poetical filling-up of an imaginary picture.
The profession of “Fool” was so profitable in Germany, in the Middle Ages, that not only were men found ambitious to be attached to some nobleman’s house, where there were ordinarily ten or a dozen of them, but they were proud of being as it were the honorary fools of the nobles, and for this reason. ”

“ In the winter we returned to Perm.
[1] £2 10s.
And in that winter I felt a hatred and loathing of mankind. You know how it is. You appear on the stage, and you see hundreds of fools and wretches with their eyes fixed full upon you—that slavish cowardly shudder (I know it so well) runs all down your back, and you have the prickly sensation of one who has sat down in an ant heap. They look upon you as their plaything, as a thing which they have purchased for their gratification for a single evening. They have the power to condemn or to approve. ”

“ Struck through the riot like a sword,
And gashed the midnight's festival.
She watched the city through the pane,
The old Silenus half insane,
The idiot crowd that drags its chain—
And then she heard the bells again,
And heard the voices with the word:
Ecco il santo! ”

“ If you have gone and peeped into a looking-glass there was an instant burst of laughter, and then you have become aware that All Fools' Day has come round again. Some boys and girls get angry when they have been thus fooled ”

“ To labor when one might repose; to sigh when one might sing; to undergo the pains of culture when sweet pleasure temptingly proposed a holiday—ah no! Fools attempt to better their condition and make it worse. Let those who need improving scour themselves ”

“ That no Body might hurt them, if they say or do any Thing that's foolish.
Innk. But on the contrary, I won't say, that their Dress does rather provoke some People to do them Hurt; insomuch, that oftentimes of Fools they become Mad-Men. Nor do I see any Reason, why a Bull that gores a Man, or a Dog, or a Hog that kills a Child, should be punish'd, and a Fool who commits greater Crimes should be suffered to live under the Protection of his Folly. ”

“ The Foolish One had discovered the use of fire by playing with a burning branch ignited by the lightning in the forest. A fool bestrode the first wild horse and rode upon its back. Nearly always it was the fools who did things first. Wise Men were too wise—they had seen too many fools die of their folly.
The fingers of the Foolish One were never idle. He made many things and he pulled as many to pieces again. The people of the tribe had grown very skillful in weaving baskets from tough grasses. ”

“ To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day,—for I fear the second of April is not many hours distant—in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool—as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read those Parables—not guessing at their involved wisdom—I had more yearnings towards that simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbour ”

“ It is a living and terrible force, and beside it all other stage crowds seem mechanical puppets. In the foreground of this shifting mass is seen the village idiot, ‘God’s fool,’ teased by the thoughtless children, half-reverenced, half-pitied, by the men and women. ”

“ Douce, in his essay “On the Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare,” has made a ninefold division of English fools, according to quality or place of employment, as the domestic fool, the city or corporation fool, the tavern fool, the fool of the mysteries and moralities. The last is generally called the “vice,” and is the original of the stage clowns so common among the dramatists of the time of Elizabeth, and who embody so much of the wit of Shakespeare. ”

“ Poor Fools, like other fools, may grieve If they their woes conceal. Hither, Folly—Folly, ho! All Fools to Folly kneel. “What though a Fool be melancholy, Sick, sick at heart—heigho! Pain must he hide 'neath laughing Folly, What Fool should heed his woe! Hither, Folly—Folly, ho! Fool must unpitied go. “E'en though a Fool should fondly woo, E'en though his love be high, Poor Folly's fool must wear the rue, Proud love doth pass him by. Heigho, Folly—Folly, ho! Poor Fool may love—and die. “Though Wisdom should in motley go, And fools the wise man ape ”

“ The contrast would be too painful, the shock too great, but for the intervention of the Fool, whose well-timed levity comes in to break the continuity of feeling when it can no longer be borne, and to bring into play again the fibres of the heart just as they are growing rigid from over-strained excitement. The imagination is glad to take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical operation vents itself in sallies of wit. ”

“ There was room at that time for a work like the 'Ship of Fools.' It was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights. People are always fond of reading the history of their own times. If the good qualities of their age are brought out, they think of themselves or their friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries are exhibited, they think of their neighbours and enemies. Now the 'Ship of Fools' is just such a satire which ordinary people would read, and read with pleasure. ”

“ We are in the castle of the wicked magician. He has been thinking too of the young man—the boy— the Fool, who was at the Temple of the Grail, and he knows more about him than the poor old knight. He knows that if he is ever to steal the Holy Grail, as he so long has hoped to do, he must get this Fool into his power, of all people in the world. ”

“ The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror. ”

“ Hans Sachs joined in the crusade against the empire of Folly, and one of his broadsides is illustrated with a graceful design, the greater part of which is copied in our cut No. 141. A party of ladies have set a bird-trap to catch the fools of the age, who are waiting to be caught. One fool is taken in the trap, while another is already secured and pinioned, and others are rushing into the snare. ”

“ Before I have done you shall confess, between laughter and tears, that he is of the very essence of life, that you have known him all your days though you never recognised him till now, and that you would as soon go without Hamlet as miss him.’
The Fool in King Lear has been so favourite a subject with good critics that I will confine myself to one or two points on which a difference of opinion is possible. To suppose that the Fool is, like many a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to be half-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. ”